[drewtemp]

I've also built plenty of Django projects without a lot of the mentioned utilities, but that doesn't make them any less useful or recommended. I'm certain the developer knows that Ubuntu isn't the only OS and Heroku isn't the only deployment platform. I'd argue against the mainstream statement. Ubuntu is one of the more popular server distros used. Do you expect someone to cover every possible platform and PaaS provider?

What Kenneth is offering is obviously a guide with recommendations and not requiring you to use them for your projects. It's ultimately up to the developer to decide what to use.